Creating Sustainability by Mythmaking: IKEA’s Advertising Campaigns
In the 2025 March Engage with Ideas session, Professor Astrid Skjerven will focus on the mechanisms of commissioning green credentials. She will analyse how producers commission communicate their green credentials to consumers.
As a leading global brand in home furnishings and the world’s biggest furniture retailer, IKEA is a company whose response to the changed societal conditions, and its communication with the customers, is of vital importance. In order to understand the mechanisms of green commissioning, IKEA Norway’s advertising campaign “The Trash Collection”, and its follow-up “The Life Collection”** which were explicitly directed toward the Sustainable Development Goals – the United Nations (UN SDGs).
The talk is based on an article which aimed analyse the underlying intention of the campaign, its impact, and the role of the customers. In particular, the narrative and mythological means used to influence consumers have been investigated.
Astrid Skjerven is Professor Emerita of design theory at Oslo Metropolitan University. Her special fields of interest are everyday aesthetics, the relation between culture and sustainability, and Nordic design in a global perspective. She is the co-editor of Design for a Sustainable Culture (2017), Gender and the Sustainable Development Goals (2023), Transnational Discourses in Nordic Design (2024) and Mediating Sustainability in the Consumer Society (2025).
Reference
Skjerven, Astrid. (2025). Creating sustainability by mythmaking -IKEA’s advertising campaigns “The Trash Collection” and “The Life Collection”. In A. Skjerven, L. L. Berg, L. M. Nielsen & D. Stuedal. (Eds) Mediating Sustainability in the Consumer Society. Routledge 2025
** https://brandingforum.org/general/ikea-norway-life-collection/